Minister blasts doctors who continue to treat pandemic lightly

Star: PETALING JAYA: Doctors must adhere to the Health Ministry’s directives on influenza A (H1N1) and be especially alert when treating patients with pneumonia, said minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai.
He said they must be more vigilant and careful as the world was facing a pandemic.
Liow was commenting on complaints that general practitioners and even private hospitals were not identifying and handling possible influenza cases properly.
Two of the four influenza deaths were patients who were treated by general practitioners and private hospitals.
“I am upset,” he told The Star yesterday after appearing as a guest on The Star Online Live Chat at the newspaper’s Studio V here yesterday.
A visibly angry Liow said it was common sense for any doctor to test for the virus so they would be able to exclude the possibility of individuals with severe pneumonia having A (H1N1).
Liow said the ministry had stepped up its fight against the disease.
“We hope doctors and nurses will co-operate with us.”
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Ismail Merican said doctors who continued to ignore ministry guidelines for the flu would be hauled up by the ministry’s Disease Control director.
“We are not punishing them. We will find out why they are not adhering to guidelines,” he told a press conference after opening the National Clinical Immunology Symposium at Marriott Hotel yesterday.
He urged doctors to get computers so they could look up updated information on the guidelines relating to the disease on the ministry’s website.
Dr Ismail said doctors could not refuse patients’ request for throat swabs if their flu persisted after a few days of home quarantine.
“With normal flu, you should get better in two or three days,” he said.
He was responding to two complainants, who related their personal experience at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital where doctors and medical practitioners had refused their requests for throat swabs to be taken.
Dr Ismail said the four deaths in the country where victims delayed seeking treatment or where doctors failed to detect the infection early were sad episodes.
“It means that there was poor sense of alert,” he said.